There's no reason a child that young "needs" to read either, but we tend to think it's a good idea to let them experience the modern world and get ready to live in it.
I predict these children will have more social issues in adulthood and thrive less well than those who had smartphones when they were younger.
Playing video games (mid 80s) from primary school, chatting online (mid 90s), relatively low mother tongue langage but still better than people 10year younger than me, totally failed studies and career far from my potential, but still not too chubby.
People thinking that an electronic device is good for a kid and it's just a matter of self control or parenting has a fairly strong biais and never spent time with a kid or forgot what is it to be one.
On the contrary, my experience of being a kid is exactly why I'm convinced this is good for them. As a bullied kid I'm pretty sure computer access literally saved my life, and I've consistently seen that the younger someone got on the internet the healthier their relationship with it is.
An escape from reality is far from a good solution. Although I also think that computer access is much better than a cellphone, I strongly believe that parental control is not the correct way, and need several layers of protections.
First one being, is your kid feeling safe enough with you to discuss any topics? I know I couldn't.
I have seen way too many kids having already social media pressure, including my own kid with a fairly low level of screen time across the board (I'd say 4h-8h a week maximum including a movie on Sunday morning, depending if she wants to play around with python or some GT7) this allows also some interesting discussions.
It's great that tech helped you when you were young, but one can't extrapolate here and apply personal experience more generally. The circumstances are vastly different. In some cases there will be kids that suffer from a lack of phone, but there's still computers, there's still video games, etc, etc. There's just no 24/7 cellphone addiction consuming every aspect of their waking day (and night, under the covers) to the exclusion of all else, and to the great detriment of their mental health.
Most adults seem to forget all their memories of their childhood, particularly if they become parents at which point they forget everything instantly.
I'm not sure why this is, what this phenomenon is called (if it has a name), and I would sincerely appreciate a scientific explanation if there is one. I still remember my childhood from about 4 years old onward as a guy in his mid 30s, so I simply can't relate to it.
Computers pre-social media were different. You could do a lot offline. Today, social media has been proven to be extremely toxic. There was a paper submitted to HN that mentions how much worse mental health is the earlier a child gets a cell phone[1].
Today children have unrestricted access to God knows what is on the internet and social media. This is not a recipe for success. Parents need to get involved.
Had no internet access until 18 (mid-90s), No mobile phone until 22.
My physical and mental health has declined significantly since I've been 'always online'. Learning new skills in an age of endless distractions is harder too, despite the amount of educational resources online that should make it easier.
When I got hooked on WoW in my 30s, it was very obvious that there were a lot of students sacrificing their education to their gaming habits. And this was before social media really took off, with its 24/7 narcissism and tribal warfare.
Computers we had access to did not have ML generated crack being served by every app on them. Even so I had addiction issues, thank god this was before ML.
And no I did not have access to my parent's bar to drink vodka and brandy whenever I felt like as a 12 year old to "prepare me to real world".
Do you think these kids are going to get access to laptops?
But to answer the question: patterns of socialization that their peers will follow. How to work around surveillance and filtering. How (and why) to jailbreak locked hardware.
People outside the no-smartphone group will develop specific ways of interacting, which you only "get" when you participate
Stuff you can't even know you're missing out, because you don't know what you don't know
Maybe calling someone without a heads up is considered rude, or ending sentences with a period is considered passive aggressive, maybe responding to someone right away is considered desperate or using certain words is okay IRL but not online
I agree that kids having smartphones is not good, but isolating an individual or small group from ostensibly the rest of the world in inconsistent ways that may interact in even worse ways is something you should be careful with, you might just be marking them for life
Everyone in the room is laughing. „What is it?“ - „Oh, Jimmy just sent a meme. You wouldn’t get it“. How does that feel like?
Trouble is, you’re way too old to understand the implications of not being in touch with your social group. If everyone else is in the loop but you’re not, your dead, socially. If you’re especially unlucky, you’ll be treated as the weirdo outcast with Luddite parents. You cannot imagine how mean kids are.
This problem is bigger than you think. Having to live through years of shaming and being alone causes trouble later in life.
Kids are cruel and if they have a mind to it will make fun of literally anything. I was a social outcast in school, where favorite jokes of the other kids were that I was overweight, that I was inept at sports, that I wore glasses, that my shirts had collars, that my only shoes were cleats, that my socks were black instead of white, that I wore briefs instead of boxers.
Funnily enough, though I grew up in the ’90s–’00s with parents who disliked TV and popular movies and heavily restricted media consumption in the household, nobody at school ever made fun of the fact that I’d never seen Friends or The Matrix. Later when I was in college I often saw people who’d grown up with access to popular media saying they’d feel socially deprived if they didn’t watch the latest new show. Personally I didn’t feel deprived, either at the time or in retrospect, even though today I greatly enjoy catching up on movies I never watched. I think there’s something to the idea that some restriction, particularly in childhood, can be healthy.
I believe your example lacks something important, the isolation will go way deeper than just media, maybe you won't develop the same cultural marks, maybe your humor will be significantly different, maybe you won't get to participate in the 3AM shit talking where the group strengthened bonds, maybe people won't know how to give you directions to places (Because they're reliant in maps to get to a general zone), maybe you won't get to participate in online events like gaming sessions or esports
This might not being the kid that didn't watch popular stuff, this might be making a kid alien to an enviroment they will have to deal with for the rest of their life; They might adapt well, or maybe they'll develop a "mark", an "accent" of sorts, which distinguishes them from the rest of the group
I agree that restriction or adversity might be healthy, but paraphrasing House
"Then why stop there? Poke a stick in her eye, imagine how healthy they'll be then"
Wouldn’t you agree that suffering as a child has effects on your adult life? I’m absolutely convinced that some restrictions are good, and not blindly following what the cool kids are doing too. But some people here seem to be blissfully unaware of the consequences harassment has on children.
My point is that if bullies weren’t making life hell for kids without smartphones, they’d be making kids’ life hell for some other irrelevant reason. I see no reason to believe that the bullying situation will be made worse by removing phones from the equation.
If I had a time machine, maybe I’d give my seventh‐grade self white socks and boxer shorts and see if that made any difference.
Path A: you’re shown the meme; “lmfao, nice” — now you’ve broken ice or strengthened a bond
Path B: “nah” — “whatever”
——
Don’t send your kids to a run of the mill public school — which is infested with children of asshats, jackasses, and assholes. Don’t live in in that sort of community. If you can help it, these will be some of the biggest factors in how your kid turns out.
I’ve been to a lot of schools. Kids from parents that just don’t give a shit will turn out like them: vampires, parasites, and people that generally drag others down for their own benefit (unless they’re lucky and get out).
Mean kids come from mean families. Usually people are mean because they don’t have the resources to fill whatever hole they have in them — and have to use maladaptions to get their fix. I.e. money problems and never taught the skills or given the resources to ease them.
I.e. send your kid to a private school that is recommended by people you trust. Just like you would a dentist, or a mechanic, and so on.
Easier said than done, but not an unsolvable problem.
> Don’t send your kids to a run of the mill public school — which is infested with children of asshats, jackasses, and assholes.
This is so obvious to me(from reading, observation and my own experience in public school) that I don't understand why smart, educated people don't realize this.
No way I'm going to send my kids to the cesspool that is public school if I can help it. People can call me and my family privileged all they want. What should I do, downgrade my child's education and life because it's not fair I have the resources others don't?
If you're getting bullied for that you'd be getting bullied anyway. Bullies don't find a reason like that then bully you. They get the impulse to bully you then find the reasons to attack you.
No, they have the impulse to bully someone and then go find someone to pick on. Much of what teens do is about desperately trying to avoid being the obvious target.
There are lots and lots of different social groups.
There are mean kids, and kind kids, and good schools and bad schools. There's a variety of experience here to take into account.
There are good families and bad families.
There are... variables. Yes, being a social outcast is hard. I would argue that being a social outcast involves _a lot more_ than not having access to the latest memes. That's where the misunderstanding lies.
It’s not just the latest memes, that was merely an example. Just consider that huge parts of the social life of children and teenagers happens on social media platforms now. Take that away, and you made it a lot harder for your child to be accepted by their peers.
No matter the other variables, that is a pretty common theme for teens nowadays, no matter the community they live in or school they go to.
My solution is to find a community for our family that share the same values, one of them being no smartphones for children. Another one is being nice to others regardless of what they look like and what they have or don't have. These communities are rare, but exist.
The whole point of this agreement is that nobody in the kid's social group would have phones. That's what makes this a good thing. It definitely would be a bad thing if only one family did this.
Maybe... though with a growing trends of the most affluent / best educated families in SF Bay Area not allowing smartphone use I find your prediction unlikely.
In most jurisdictions, cities have no say in this question. Schools can ban cell phones on school grounds, during business hours, that's it. Everything else is mostly a question of at least state if not national legislation. So, no, it's not gonna happen.
The US might be different, the amount of stuff a school board, for one single school, HOAs or city councils can legislate is just mind boggling sometimes.
It’s a horrible move. When it comes to technology, the kids affected by this will be illiterate compared to their peers.
I graduated college in 2018. Some of my classmates weren’t allowed to use “screens” growing up, and you could tell instantly. They struggled to use google to do basic research, struggled to collaborate in group projects, and were generally a burden to others, constantly needing help with technology.
Counterpoint, I grew up without any screens, and am more tech savvy than both of my kids put together. When the technology arrived, I learned programming, word processing, the web, google, and collaboration, with no effort at all. Likewise my siblings and my mom. That stuff just isn't all that hard. It doesn't require an entire childhood spent learning it.
Kids don't even know what a folder is. Hell, college students don't know what folders are. [1]
Smartphones don't teach you anything technical in the slightest, most of them are extremely dumbed down black boxes engineered specifically so the lowest common denominator won't get lost on them.
They'll still have access to laptops & computers and whatnot at home, but kids just don't need smartphones that early on, or at least not ones with unlimited bandwith and access to putrid entities like tiktok and instagram.
When it comes to technology, the kids affected by this will be illiterate compared to their peers.
My nephew could competently use a phone (use apps, update settings, understand installing things, etc) when he was 6. A 13 year old will be able to catch up in a week.
I’m curious what skills these pre-teens would miss out on by not having smartphones. They can still use computers, tablets, and dumbphones. And once they’re 14 their parents can decide to let them have a smartphone, so it’s not like they’ll go off to college never having touched a smartphone.
I don't think so. The Home PC generation is way more technically literate than the generation after that grew up with the smartphone, where the elementary interaction has been reduced to just three basic steps that always work: 1) lift and look at phone 2) swipe finger up 3) press the dopamine er - Instagram - button
Most people born in the nineties and before definitely struggle with computers - maybe not the academics in your circle, but anyone not exposed to or interested in technology.
I spent a while working in tech support for small to medium businesses, and boy, did those people have trouble to understand the basic interaction with their computers. Instead of learning the paradigms and applying them to general situations, they would memorise where on the screen to click, in which order.
You’re uncharitable view of generation Z is pretty much proven wrong if that is your assumption on what you can do on Instagram, though. Looks like a classic „my generation was the last good one, everyone else born after is stupid and lazy!“
Excluding people who are technical, whether by hobby or profession, everyone I know between 35 and 50 or so at least loosely understands things like the difference between a website and a locally executing program, the difference between local and cloud storage, the tradeoff between iOS-style walled gardens and relative openness of Android or PC (whichever side their own personal preferences happen to fall on), the difference between SMS and iMessage, and so on.
People under 30 -- again, excluding programmers, obviously there is no shortage of talented and knowledgeable young people in the industry -- overwhelmingly don't seem to be even capable of understanding any of these things.
Some medical devices like the Dexcom CGM and insulin pumps use smartphones to communicate and upload their data to the cloud where parents are able to follow their child’s readings. So, there are some reasons. The phone isn’t the problem. Social media is the real issue. For children who have a healthy relationship with their parents, and are able to correctly handle peer pressure, it can be fine.
Can't they just check it when the kids get home? Like what are they going to do from their work anyway.
Silly we have to throw all kids mental health and attention spans down the toilet just to satisfy some fringe cases like this that all existed before smartphones.
I suspect you'll see many more cities across the globe follow suit over the coming decades.
There is absolutely no reason a child younger than that age "needs" a phone. At best they are potential conveniences.
But they are basically guaranteed to be harmful to some degree. Easy net benefit to these kids.